Next month, it will have been a year since Mary and Kent Jagnow approached the city and asked for permission to keep “Foggy,” a chicken that happened to wander into their home on the west end of the city.

The request started a plea to keep one chicken as a pet. What the Holland City Council will consider for first reading at its business meeting Wednesday could allow residents to keep up to six chickens for meat and eggs — with a list of rules, of course.

Holland City Manager Ryan Cotton cautioned the city council at a Wednesday study session to be stringent with the rules, saying he’s spent a lot of time in the past 20 years, in the different communities he’s worked in, dealing with similar requests. The comment came after some discussion about the rule that chickens could be allowed to wander in a yard if supervised.

Cotton recommended keeping the wording, because if a chicken did wander onto another person's property, the owner of that property likely would call city hall.

One argument was that dog owners are not required to watch dogs that are outside. The Jagnows questioned the supervised roaming rule, saying chickens need to wander and peck for worms, and that the ordinance already stipulates coop and fence requirements.

Cotton also suggested that permits be required for all chickens, rather than opting for a draft that would allow for one chicken, duck, goose or similar fowl to be kept as a pet without requiring the permit.

The ordinance also would provide a sliding scale based on property size, where smaller lots can have up to four chickens, medium-size lots up to five chickens and lots an acre or more can have up to six chickens.

Other rules in the ordinance include:

• No roosters. “They’ll get busted if they try to have a rooster in the city,” said City Planner Mark Vanderploeg said.

• Chickens can be raised on a non-commercial basis, meaning eggs and meat are for that residence only. The ordinance isn’t designed to fault a person who’s giving eggs or meat to a neighbor or friend — but setting up shop and selling eggs out of the front lawn would not be allowed.

• The required coop must be set back from neighboring properties and must be five feet from the property line and 25 feet from a neighbor's home.